To: The Aberdeen Music Scene

[MarkDrummer]

The 'togetherness' of bands is still happening in some places - my band (Uniform) have played with Audiokicks and they're supporting us in a couple of weeks in return - nice guys too. We also got quite pally with Human Furniture (who have since split) and never made it to play a gig with them. We've never had a bad experience playing with any other bands in Aberdeen (barring one gig which I won't go into) and thoroughly enjoyed playing with the other bands and hearing their feedback on our stuff, as well as giving our feedback on their stuff.

The Aberdeen scene is a bit better now than it was a few years ago after Drakes and Kef died. Plenty of decent wee bands round Aberdeen now and not everyone (although a lot do) sounds the same.

Outwith Aberdeen, it can be a struggle - we recently booked a Scottish tour and it was a nightmare booking venues then having them cancel on you (although this may be because we booked everything through our singer's promotions company). We've even got local support for our Glasgow gig from the Miss Lucid guys (who are classed as local support) and are taking another Aberdeen band on the road with us to support us.

I'm a big believer in 'helping other local bands out as long as they're decent' and we will continue to do this when we can. We've landed a support slot with a pretty decent Dunfermline based band in August and they're also well into local support and helping out other Scottish bands.

In saying that, there are some right fucking arseholes in other bands in Aberdeen who take the piss with the 'my band's better than your band' mentality.

I attend as many gigs as I can during the week in Aberdeen, perhaps the advantage of living smack bang in the middle of town helps this though.

[Guest E.C]

what an interestingly worded advertisement.

[MarkDrummer]

Behave yourself.

It's relevant to the thread about bands not backstabbing each other constantly.

[The Milner]

I saw you guys a few weeks ago mark, with The Audio kicks and Miss Lucid, you guys have come along miles since you started, very impressed!

[Stroopy121]

I wish I could like that post a thousand times.

I only liked that post because your new avatar made me lol.

xx

[Jaaakkkeee]

I used to be their bassist! Haha

[Flash@TMB]

Wow, just re-read my post 7 years later and for once didn't think "dick".

[Shaki]

More small venues are needed. Like Cellar 35 which is a good venue though a little impractical, with the noise complaints and such. There's just not enough 60-100 capacities for smaller gigs. It's shite putting on a handful of local bands on at the HUGE Tunnels. Even with 40 or 50 in there, it looks dead. There seems to be a good number of little pubs that play live music, but it seems they limit themselves to pub-rock and cover bands etc.

You look at other cities like Glasgow, Leeds and Manchester than have a plethora of little venues available, alot of which are free to use. Fewer overheads means you can charge about £2 on the door for a bill of 4 or 5 local bands, and still make sure everyone who brought backline gets petrol money. Around here, venues are expensive to hire, so you're getting charged 5 quid to see your mates band. It's not alot of money, and it's not the promoter's fault, but it can be enough to put people off, especially on a weeknight or whatever.

For a city this size, it's odd that there's not alot to choose from in terms of where local bands can play.

Agree. We hired the Malt Mill recently and it worked out pretty well. They don't have a PA though so you need to take everything. It's bigger than Cellar 35 but with 40 odd folk there would have a pretty busy feel.

[TR!ΔNGL€ T€€TH]

Agree. We hired the Malt Mill recently and it worked out pretty well. They don't have a PA though so you need to take everything. It's bigger than Cellar 35 but with 40 odd folk there would have a pretty busy feel.

How did the locals feel about you playing there? Would you recommend it as a venue for more "difficult" music?

[Shaki]

How did the locals feel about you playing there? Would you recommend it as a venue for more "difficult" music?

It is the function room downstairs that you hire so the locals aren't an issue. It was a punk rawk night we put on, I don't think they care as long as the bar takings are decent (no straight edge!)

[Swingin' Ryan]

You look at other cities like Glasgow, Leeds and Manchester than have a plethora of little venues available, alot of which are free to use. Fewer overheads means you can charge about £2 on the door for a bill of 4 or 5 local bands, and still make sure everyone who brought backline gets petrol money. Around here, venues are expensive to hire, so you're getting charged 5 quid to see your mates band. It's not alot of money, and it's not the promoter's fault, but it can be enough to put people off, especially on a weeknight or whatever.

For a city this size, it's odd that there's not alot to choose from in terms of where local bands can play.

I totally agree that having venues where you can easily to put on small gigs at low expenses is massively important but it needs to be remembered that cities like Glasgow, Leeds and Manchester all have over DOUBLE the population of Aberdeen. Plus they've all been what could be considered 'cosmopolitan' cities much longer than Aberdeen has, therefore they've had small grassroots music venues in those cities which go back decades. They also all had major bands, 'scenes' and record labels come from those cities which meant people actually moved there from the surrounding areas to try and get bands/venues up and running throughout the 70's/80's/90's meaning more demand for these small venues.

We need to start comparing the music scene in Aberdeen with places like Southampton and Derby, not Glasgow. Glasgow will always absolutely dwarf Aberdeen in every kind of cultural output, one of the reasons it's a much better place to live if you want a to make music and also the reason it's absolutely packed with swaggering, pretentious cunts that make any Saturday evening out feel like Rab C Nesbit meets Nathan Barley (I will point out this is not an attack on Glasweigan's more the people who populate a certain 'scene' there).

Aberdeen's main problem is nobody outside of here knows anything about it. People outside of Aberdeen will be able to name more bands from Dundee than they will from here. This is exactly the point that I was making in the Lockah thread, the fact that MTV published an article with the headline 'Aberdeen becomes a threat' is universally positive for everyone involved in the Aberdeen music scene regardless of what kind of music you make. With a few minor exceptions, Aberdeen has no contemporary musical heritage. That's it's biggest benefit right now, it doesn't have the kind of 'cliqueness' or hierarchy you find in Glasgow or Manchester, it's anybody's for the taking. Play absolutely anywhere to absolutely anyone and makes sure everyone knows about it.

[Soda Jerk]

I do agree with everything you're saying. Aberdeen is quite exluded from other scenes, both in terms of acitvity and also geographically.

Still, the size of the city shouldn't prevent having 2 or 3 pubs/clubs with a small function room available for bands and promoters to put on a gig very cheaply. Even shitpot towns like Wakefield and Bolton have great choices of venues available for local bands to play regularly. Wakefield is probably smaller than Aberdeen but still has a great scene. probably helps that it's so close to Leeds, but it also helps having small venues for bands that are just starting out can play gigs at with very few overheads.

[The Milner]

I think its worth pointing out the reason Drakes closed, it wasnt used near enough to cover its costs. Aberdeen has had these small venues, Drakes, Malt Mill, Cellar 35, amongst various small pubs that have tried their hand at it. Simple fact is, up here these places dont make any real money from these small gigs to make them viable business's, we want for Drakes, yet we as a scene never utilised it when we had it, Malt Mill has constantly struggled to make enough from these gigs, Cellar 35 has noise problems but i would imagine if it was raking it in on these nights the noise issues would be accommodated. It would be great to have a Drakes back, but would it stay open for any longer than a year? Probably not, it would be filled maybe once or twice a month if lucky and rest would be bands playing to 10 people.

[Teabags]

Part of the problem there is that Drakes was a stand alone place. If it was part of a part/restaurant/whatever and that room was only open/staffed when gigs were booked, it would be able to deal with it a lot better. Drakes tried to be open as much as possible, with good reason, and god knows how many gigs were next to dead. Well, I know actually cos I was at a fair few of them along with maybe one other punter.

In an ideal world, we would need Drakes which is owned and "run" by another business with Jim or Sharon or both in charge of bookings at their discretion. That would rule.

Fuck I miss Drakes.

[Spoonie]

Drakes was an awesome place, but I can see how it wasn't viable. It had some packed gigs, like those AUBL all dayers but there were a lot where you struggled to imagine them covering staff costs with bar takings, let alone the rest of teh overheads or any kind of profit to reinvest.